The Role of Nurses in Involving Elderly and Families in Healthcare

This discussion paper addresses the critical role of nurses in geriatric care, focusing on how nurses involve older persons and their families to maintain health. It begins with an introduction to gerontological nursing, highlighting the importance of age-friendly environments and the challenges fa...Read More

DISCUSSION PAPER

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Topic: Role of nurse in involving older persons and their family to maintain their health.............1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

Topic: Role of nurse in involving older persons and their family to maintain
their health
INTRODUCTION
Gerontological Nursing practices is important for the elderly care to maintain their
standards of living and healthy lifestyle patterns. There is a need to understand that ageing
population needs an outline for designing a flexible age friendly work environments at
professional levels. This assignment is going to highlight the role of nurses in promoting active
participation of the aging population and their families. It would be helpful in leading a fulfiling
life in terms of today's fast paced changing dynamics of surroundings. Moreover, there are
several policies and programs for addressing the challenges and obstacles of the older population
which is going to be evaluated. Lastly, different perspectives is also presented.
MAIN BODY
Overview
In recent times, the ageing population is on a rise and is growing in almost all the major
developed countries all around the world. Aging is the irreversible phenomenon of functional
and structural changes in context to humans, animals or others. However, this aging is
proportional to the challenges and opportunities as well. According to the World Health
Organization, the primary health care sector focus in developing an integrated framework to
provide better facilities and long term care to bring age friendly approaches for the older people
and their families (Buruck and et.al., 2016). Herein the gerontological nursing is considered and
is focused on both specialist and generalist practices. The involved nurses play an essential role
in providing them services to have a controlled environment and lead an active lifestyle by
engaging them and their families.
There are several challenges such as multi dimensional aspects, continual decrease in the
existing conditions of their health and monitoring of formation of any uncertain symptoms or
complications, that can be identified by nurses. They identified the psychosocial support and
aided in improving the relationships with the relatives and friends and facilitate in making them
express through authentic and transparent mediums (Morgan and Tarbi, 2016). Their
contribution is useful in maintenance of the cultural sensitivity and help in safeguarding the
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deterioration and promote the maximum rehabilitation process by undertaking the essential care
elements of doing daily routine activities like dressing, eating, bathing etc.
Role of nurses for elderly care
Furthermore, the major role that a nurse has while dealing with elderly care is the
educative role due to lack of support and empathy when dealing with critical cases of older
people. Health promotion must be done in accordance with the awareness generation regarding
screening, insurance and role of nutrition. Nurses assist in enhancing the quality and delivery of
services by imparting the self care activities and its significance for sustaining the dynamic
changes in the surrounding environment. Their responsibility includes to encourage the elders for
indulging in activities for weight management, stress relieving practices etc. in order to minimise
the chances of any risks to diseases like stroke, diabetes, obesity, heart attack, etc. These nurses
focus on giving authentic information to these patients and their families so that they can take
decisions independently and initiate to adopt a more active and participative healthy lifestyles
(Mills, Wand and Fraser, 2015). The roles and responsibilities of nurses are diverse in terms of
giving proper assistance to the patients and the involved families to make the entire procedures
more accessible to them and give them complete support to gain confidence and loyalty.
It is evident from several studies that elders after crossing sixty years of age gets affected
from isolation or several socio-structural changes. Moreover, aging is refereed as complicated
because of many triggering components which hamper the health of older people and bring
distance between their families. This results are shown in the form of wither sending them off to
old age care centres or nursing homes and sometimes to hire a helping hand at home for 24*7
hours. In both the cases, there are chances that such old age people are prone to depression or
any such health issue affecting their well being and physiological levels. Herein the nurses' role
come in handy, they not only make them feel alive and worthy but also educate them to be
independent and support in building a landscape for friendly surroundings. Moreover, they focus
on incorporating the life enhancing activities that aimed at targeting the older people to
participate and minimise their pain or stress by engaging them on daily basis.
In regard to the above, the nurses also contribute in the managerial role where they
supervise and monitor the patients ongoing treatment plans religiously and provide
recommendations if needed. Alongside, they focus on bringing innovative ideas to make their
families more considerate towards fulfilment of the older people. This gives the nurses a
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platform to assess the patient's overall assessment in terms of their physical attributes and
cognitive skills. Moreover, their focus is to deliver care services through proper designing,
outlining and evaluating nursing care to avoid any ambiguity and gain knowledge in
understanding both acute and obtuse health concerns (Eide,Halvorsen and Almendingen, 2015).
All this is possible when the families support the entire professional setup with reliable and
validate trust. The nurses in this sector must provide training and an overview on their working
practices to bridge the communication gaps. They impart skills and knowledge base regarding
safety, prevention and compliance to follow the medications and prescribed instructions for
better recovery of the older patients.
The nurses have adopted few strategies to make the older people health conscious and
inculcated a sense of responsibility to follow a healthy lifestyle. This is possible through
participation from the families who also help the elders by being supportive and caring. Their
mindsets have been made up by nursing training who made them realise the presence of an
elderly figure in the household. Nurses established activities to be conducted with families to
alleviate the overall isolation emotion and discard the emotional sufferings to improve the
complete health of an elder for maintaining the quality and standards of living for longer terms
(Carlson and Bengtsson, 2014). With family support, an older person could become more aware
about the nutrition con tent in their diet plans, which ultimately help them to live longer and
better. This would aid in bringing a stability component in the structural levels of the lifestyle
choices chosen for the elderly. Moreover, this gives a platform to the nurses to bring a healthy
and disciplined lifestyle with the aged people who are suffering from any illness or medical
condition.
Implementation of policies and programs
Policies and programs are vital in formulating the foundation of proper assistance in
providing health promotion related information in robust manner by involving all the differing
levels of perspectives from people such as counsellors, practitioners, nurses, families etc. In this
context, policy is defined as the strategic system to propose changes at individual or
organizational levels whereas program is the component which gives a set of instructions or
guidelines to perform a task for betterment as the whole. There are several challenges that act as
barriers in addressing to queries and issues of the aging population, however with presence of
policies and programs, there are many concrete changes that brought radical order at the societal
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levels. It is found that the population for people aged sixty and above is going to be double by
the year 2050 and majority of it is going to be from the developing nations only (Cox, 2015).
Thus, professional bodies with the government support has laid policies, programs for generating
health promotion among the emerging aging populace.
In context to this, the Australian government has a number of policies, programs and
initiatives to ensure the effective strategies on longer terms to address the challenges of the older
people. The National Aged Care Advocacy Program (NACAP) has been postulated under the
Aged Care ACT 1997 for providing independent and confidential advocacy support to the aging
people. Along with this, it ensures the rights for their families and the professionals working in
this sector (Price, 2016). Moreover, OPAN (Older Persons Advocacy Network) is the legal
provider at the national level which networks through nine service delivery organizations in
Australia to generate information, teachings and overall advocacy to the older people. This has
created a helpline and is consistent in terms of empowering the patients and their families. Their
focus is on removing the socio-economic obstacles to promote participation from the workforce
that aged sixty or above (Gorman, 2017). Additionally, it led to the safe and secure feeling that
older people desire for to sustain in the community.
Nevertheless, several programs such as MyAged Care is the common platform for the
families and carers to gain details and knowledge about the treatment plans and medication. The
purpose is to make the lives of such aging population and their families convenient and
standardised without creating any confusions or dilemmas. Another program is Commonwealth
Home Support Programme, which highlighted the need of a home after older people gets aloof or
stay alone and make them feel more independent (Jokanovic and et.al., 2016). This program's
agenda is to provide an entry level home who are in need of continuous supervision but wants to
live freely and satisfactoriarly. These programs and initiatives support in minimising the effects
of social isolation after a certain duration when older people are in demand of constant
monitoring and requires an external assistance. These give a podium to manage the older people
lives with more dignity and respect. Additionally, it provides qualitative services to maintain a
healthy living standards and foster the building up of an age friendly environment.
Moreover, these programs and polices at international levels must be in line with friendly
policy making for the elderly to grab the attention and is based on showing respect and dignity
for the cultures and beliefs system. It is demonstrated that the family structure is pivotal in
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strengthening the available resources and support the nurses or carer to understand the avenues
for taking good care of their health systems in healthy environment. Here, the over
protectiveness and fear of losing independence by the older people to ignore the programs and
other initiatives which clearly hamper their progression in the society. Henceforth, these must be
in sync at both local and global scales to match up the gaps and bring positive effects for
enhanced productivity.
Role of innovative use of technology and social media
With globalization and rise of technological advancements, all the sectors have received
benefits especially the primary sector in the healthcare industry. Ageing population is a
complicated segment of the entire population and needs proper attention as they lack awareness
regarding the use of digital tools and the latest trends. However, social media came as a
supportive tool to educate and engage the elderly in a systematic order by gaining their
confidence (Milani and Franklin, 2017). Along with, nurses also try to teach them and guide
them by identifying several activities to make them busy in today's times. They connect with
their families easily and work independently without any physical barriers and interact on faster
mediums. It led to a reliable and sustainable pool of mediums to reach the needs and
requirements of the professionals in more convenient approaches to give proper treatment and
adoption of activities for the elderly people through involving their families.
The professionals are using technologies to deliver services faster and it has become
easier to connect with them. For instance, MRI scanning used to take longer time but now it has
become convenient with the help of discovery of MRI machines and the agility to perform the
testing for older people. Several social media mediums like Facebook, YouTube, etc. led to
changes for elderly to connect with new people and helping the nursers to perform their duties in
more profound manner. Nonetheless, onset of information systems like automatic teller
machines, internet access, security systems and others made the services powerful and stronger
than earlier times. Therefore, these have helped the nursing practices in flourishing under a
creative space to create an age friendly environment (Lattanzio and et.al., 2014). It would
promote the path way of healthy and active lifestyle patterns in terms of conducting physical
activities and adoption of nutrition in regular diets.
Differing perspectives on role of nurses involved in elderly care
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According to the Kok, Berdenand Sadiraj, (2015), OECD (Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development) this elderly care is imperative to nursing care for people who are
in need and gain support to live a healthy life over a prolonged duration. It emphasis on
constructing an environment to uplift the socio economic factors and also influence the choices
of the older people in leading their lives. In support to this, O'hagan and et.al., (2014) also stated
that healthy adults are more self assured and more comfortable in their perceptive levels at all the
given societal levels. Here, Self concept is that element which reflects upon the thought
processes and perceptive levels of the individual and this is essential in evaluating the
adjustments by the nursing practitioners. Moreover, there are several studies that clearly
indicated that the rising aging population and the onset of several strategies to bring a sustainable
balance by getting help from nurses to manage the economic structural modes in all the countries
at worldwide levels with the help of primary health sector.
Faller and et.al. (2013) elucidated that the aging populace is an asset which is crucial in
forming the foundational pillars of the society by the nursing practitioners to establish betterment
and bright future of the humanity on the whole. On the other hand, Vahdat and et.al., (2014)
critiqued that this population are more or less a burden on the economic status and decelerate the
progression of a country's development since they are unable to perform any tasks or projects. In
regard to the same, Baumbusch and Phinney, (2014) described that several functional units are
required to perform the nursing practices to support the elderly care in effectual manner. These
units involve a wide range such as educative, supportive, restorative and more and assist in
improving the life enhancing skills. Along with, it facilitates the relationships with their families
in an overall assessment. Thus, the nursing interventions is the most important stage in an older
person's inhabitant plan and give proper support and care on the grounds of mutual trust and
empathy.
CONCLUSION
It has been summarized that nurses play an important part in enabling the patients aged
above sixty more secure and safe by executing few strategic planing to involve their families.
They act as the driving force to make the aging population worthy and give them confidence to
provide appropriate support in dealing with daily activities. Furthermore, the responsibilities are
widespread and in need to practice all the operational duties in more transparent and reliable
manner. Moreover, it reflected upon various national policies and programs that have been
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implemented to understand the problems of the ageing population and provide solutions. Along
with, different perspectives have also been presented to link the role of nurses in underpinning
the requirements of the older people and their families.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Baumbusch, J. and Phinney, A., 2014. Invisible hands: The role of highly involved families in
long-term residential care. Journal of Family Nursing.20(1). pp.73-97.)
Buruck, G. and et.al., 2016. Enhancing well-being at work: The role of emotion regulation skills
as personal resources. Journal of occupational health psychology.21(4). p.480.
Carlson, E. and Bengtsson, M., 2014. The uniqueness of elderly care: registered nurses'
experience as preceptors during clinical practice in nursing homes and home-based
care. Nurse education today.34(4). pp.569-573.
Cox, H.G., 2015. Later life: The realities of aging. Routledge.
Eide, H.D., Halvorsen, K. and Almendingen, K., 2015. Barriers to nutritional care for the
undernourished hospitalised elderly: perspectives of nurses. Journal of clinical
nursing.24(5-6). pp.696-706.
Gorman, M., 2017. Development and the rights of older people. In The ageing and development
report (pp. 21-39). Routledge.
Jokanovic, N. and et.al., 2016. Clinical medication review in Australia: a systematic
review. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy.12(3). pp.384-418
Kok, L., Berden, C. and Sadiraj, K., 2015. Costs and benefits of home care for the elderly versus
residential care: a comparison using propensity scores. The European journal of health
economics.16(2). pp.119-131.
Lattanzio, F. and et.al., 2014. Advanced technology care innovation for older people in Italy:
necessity and opportunity to promote health and wellbeing. Journal of the American
Medical Directors Association.15(7). pp.457-466.
Milani, R.V. and Franklin, N.C., 2017. The role of technology in healthy living
medicine. Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases.59(5). pp.487-491.
Mills, J., Wand, T. and Fraser, J.A., 2015. On self-compassion and self-care in nursing: Selfish
or essential for compassionate care?. International journal of nursing studies.52(4).
pp.791-793.
Morgan, B. and Tarbi, E., 2016, February. The role of the advanced practice nurse in geriatric
oncology care. In Seminars in oncology nursing (Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 33-43). WB
Saunders.
O'hagan, S.. and et.al., 2014. What counts as effective communication in nursing? Evidence
from nurse educators' and clinicians' feedback on nurse interactions with simulated
patients. Journal of advanced nursing.70(6). pp.1344-1355.
Price, M., 2016. Assessing spirituality and spiritual care needs of elderly people living in aged
care facilities (Doctoral dissertation, Murdoch University).
Vahdat, S. and et.al., 2014. Patient involvement in health care decision making: a
review. Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal.16(1).
Online
Faller, J.W. and et.al., 2013.
Old age from the perspective of elderly individuals of different nationalities. [Online].
Available through:<http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-
07072015000100128>.
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